MIDEAST ACCORD

MIDEAST ACCORD; TALKS CONTINUING, NORWEGIAN STATES

By CRAIG R. WHITNEY,

Published: September 3, 1993

OSLO, Sept. 2—
The Norwegian official who aided the secret talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization said today that negotiations on mutual recognition were continuing by telephone after the last face-to-face session here Tuesday night.

"There is a document, but it is not final yet," said the official, Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen Holst, who oversaw the secret talks that produced it last month. "The questions are obviously very sensitive, because they go to the core of the legacy of the conflict -- the raison d'etre of the P.L.O. as an organization, and the legitimacy of the Israeli state."

How the two longtime adversaries will formally agree to recognize each other's right to exist, Mr. Holst said, "has to be more formally agreed, and how that will be done technically, we don't know -- maybe by an exchange of letters, maybe by letters via me, but the priority is to have a formal ceremony for a signature in Washington." A Nine-Month Secret

Public negotiations between Israel and a delegation of Palestinians from the occupied territories have been going on since early 1992, but the accord was worked out in 14 secret sessions in Norway between delegations headed by Ahmed Suleyman Akorai, who is also called Abu Ala, for the P.L.O. and Uri Savir, director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. The last of these talks ended at the Oslo Plaza Hotel late Tuesday as the secrecy was unraveling.

Mr. Holst said Norway planned to lead an international effort to provide financial support for the areas to be evacuated by Israel -- initially, the Gaza Strip and Jericho, on the West Bank. The Scandinavian countries alone are likely to pledge more than $165 million, he said, but Norwegian officials hope for help from the European Community and other countries.

Asked if the accord could still collapse, Mr. Holst said: "My personal expectation is that one has crossed the Rubicon. There is no way back. Both parties are so committed to this particular endeavor that they will find a way to resolve the outstanding issues. I expect to be spending a lot of time on the telephone in the coming days."

Another key figure in the secret talks, Terje Rod Larsen, director general of the Norwegian Institute for Applied Social Science, said, "The only remaining question is whether the two parties will agree to what their negotiators initialled."

The Israeli Cabinet has approved the accord and the P.L.O. leadership in Tunis is expected to make its decision this week.

As for the final agreement, Mr. Holst said: "With a conflict that has been continuing for over a century, there were bound to be a lot of people who will feel uncomfortable and disoriented in this new world."

Photo: Despite still unresolved complications between the Israelis and P.L.O., Johan Jorgen Holst, the Norwegian Foreign Minister who aided the secret talks, thinks the two parties have crossed a Rubicon. "There is no way back," he said. He was with his son, Edvard, 4, on Tuesday. (Associated Press)